12/01/15 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, I'm Scott, it's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I got Gareth Porter on the line.
Hey man, how are you doing?
I'm doing fine.
Glad to be back again.
Thanks, Scott.
Happy to have you.
Hey, so everybody, Gareth Porter, he wrote the book Manufactured Crisis.
It's the book on Iran's nuclear program and what it never was.
And what it is, Manufactured Crisis.
Also, he wrote about 10,000 articles you should probably go back and read because they're really good.
This one is called The Real Reason for Turkey's Shootdown of the Russian Jet.
So I know you're going to want to tell us what before you tell us why.
So first tell us what the Turks shot down a Russian jet under what circumstances, Gareth?
Well, the circumstances were that, I mean, it depends on what you mean by the exact circumstances.
You just go ahead and talk about whichever ones you think are.
Yeah, I mean, the exact circumstances were that Russian planes were flying somewhere in the general vicinity of the Turkish-Syrian border in northwest Syria.
And the Turks, of course, had already been involved very deeply in northern Syria.
We can talk about that a little bit more.
In fact, we should talk about that a little bit more as part of the context of this event.
And more specifically, the Russian planes based just south of the city of Latakia in the same province where the planes were operating had been carrying out bombing as well as reconnaissance missions against primarily the Al-Nusra Front-led alliance or coalition, I should say, of forces that were in control essentially of that territory in northern Latakia province abutting the Turkish border.
So that is a very important immediate part of the context in which the shoot-down took place.
But more specifically, in terms of the claims made by both sides, the Turks, of course, claimed that the Russian planes had penetrated the airspace of Turkey for 17 seconds.
And they referred and showed in their graphic of the event, their version of the graphic, that there was something that I call the Parrot's Beak.
Really, it resembles the Parrot's Beak, which was made famous during the Indochina War because it was the part of Cambodia that jutted into Vietnam.
But it had a similar sort of shape.
And so that's where the Turkish government claimed the Russian planes had penetrated.
The Russian version of the radar path that their planes took, of course, is very different.
And they show that it went south of the Parrot's Beak, what I call the Parrot's Beak, and never penetrated the airspace itself.
So that's the immediate context of this issue.
And the Turks were claiming that they had given 10 separate warnings to the Russian fighter pilots when they were in the sky, already in the air, over a space of just five minutes.
Now, that in itself would be quite an important bit of information if it were true.
But what I show in my article, and this is where we get into the analysis, is that it was impossible, given the speed of the Russian Su-24 fighter plane, based on essentially a copy, in some ways, of the US F-111 fighter plane.
The speed was such that if the Turks actually gave warnings over a space of 10 minutes, if they began, excuse me, five minutes before the shootdown, the Russian planes would have actually been flying in the wrong direction.
They would have been flying away from the general direction of that Parrot's Beak of the Turkish territory.
So that simply could not have been true, based on the known speed, which the closest I could come to estimating it is about 871 miles per hour, which is more than, it's supersonic speed.
And even if the Russian planes had slowed down somewhat from their general cruising speed at low altitude, which this flight would have been, it would not have been more than about 100 miles per hour less.
And if so, it would still have made it impossible for the Turkish version of events to have been true.
So that's the essence of my analysis of the immediate event itself.
Yeah, it seems kind of funny that they would even say, oh yeah, we were warning them for five minutes when then their accusation is that they were passing over this very tiny little slice of territory.
It's not even a consistent case they're making on the face of it, unless I missed a part.
Their case was based on the notion that they had warned the Russian planes while they were on their way toward that space, that part of Turkish territory that jutted into Syria.
But what I show is that even that was not true.
I mean, it was simply impossible because at five minutes before the shoot down, the Russian planes, according to both the Russian and the Turkish versions of the flight path, was still so close to the final point of impact that it was impossible that it could have actually been five minutes before the event because of how fast they were going.
And again, according to both flight paths.
So I think this is a very dramatically telling point, which of course has not made it into commercial news coverage of the event.
All right.
But then, so, okay, it's gone from doesn't make much sense to disproven.
But then, so what does that show or prove, Gareth?
Well, I mean, I think the point that I add to this analysis, which is most of my article, really, is that the Turks actually had issued two warnings just a few days before this shoot down in which at first the Turkish foreign minister and then the Turkish prime minister had warned the Russians on two separate events, but very closely connected in time, that they must stop their, cease their operations in that part of northern Syria in Latakia province because on one hand, the threat was that the Russian planes were bombing the Turkmen population of that part of Syria and that that was intolerable and that if it didn't stop, that it would have to, that there would be serious consequences, that the Turks would ensure that there were serious consequences.
The second warning was that the Turkish government was afraid that the continued bombing would produce a flood of refugees across the border from Syria into Turkey and that too was unacceptable and therefore Turkey would have to take actions and specifically it was stated that those actions would be both in Syria and in Turkey.
Now, that's a pretty strong warning suggesting very clearly that Turkey would take action which would not be limited to Turkish territory.
So, I mean, I think that that has to be viewed as a critical part of the understanding of what the Turkish government was up to in this event.
All right, Shaul, we'll be right back with more Gareth Porter.
The real reason for Turkey's shoot down of the Russian jet at MiddleEastEye.net.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back.
I'm talking about the big war in Syria.
The Turkish shoot-down of the Russian fighter-bomber.
The ambush and the what-for here.
And, Gareth, if I read you right, what you're telling us here is there's a group of anti-Assad, Turkic rebels of one or another description.
I don't know which other adjectives one might place on them.
Allies of al-Qaeda?
Maybe, maybe not.
In effect, de facto or de jure?
I don't know.
Let me just pick up from that question because I think that's precisely right.
But it's only part of the reality that underlies this crisis between Turkey and Russia over Syria.
Yes, there were Turkmen military units organized by the – or certainly with the support of the Turkish government.
And something that I didn't have in my article but which has been reported recently is that Turkish special forces units called the Maroon Berets have actually over the past several months gone into Syria to train some of these, if not all of these, Turkish military brigades.
And they are located not just in Latakia province but in other northern provinces of Syria as well.
So they do, in fact, as you suggested in the beginning of your question, they are part of a broader coalition of jihadist-led forces.
Essentially, al-Nusra Front is the primary force in the lead with regard to the mostly foreign fighters who are fighting against the Assad regime in northern Syria on the Turkish border.
And that coalition, again led by al-Nusra Front, has been in control of a lot of territory between the Turkish border and I can't tell you exactly how many miles south from there but a number of miles south which includes the area called the Turkmen Mountain area where some of these Turkish military units, the Turkmen brigades have been located.
So really what we're looking at here is that the Turkmen population have been integrated militarily into a much larger and more powerful military force led by al-Nusra Front.
It also includes Arar al-Sham which actually has in the country as a whole, in Syria as a whole, they have more fighting forces than al-Nusra Front according to the estimates that I've seen.
And this is the primary force that the Turkish government has been counting on to put pressure on the Assad regime not just to put pressure on it but to bring about regime change if at all possible.
So the point that I'm making here is that whatever role the Turkmen fighters may have played, they were part of a larger force that has been in control led by the al-Nusra Front since 2012.
And they have tried to enlarge that.
Last year, they tried to move all the way to the Mediterranean coast of Latakia province to take over a Christian town, a small city.
It was beaten back ultimately by the Assad regime partly with their power.
And during that fight, a Syrian jet was shot down.
Pay attention to this.
It was shot down by the Turkish Air Force without any warning whatsoever.
Again, this is just south of the Turkish border but very clearly in Syrian territory.
All right.
So, well, I guess answer me this.
If Obama really wanted the Turks to back off their push for regime change in Syria, then we would know it because they would have to back off.
And he's doing this at American behest basically, right?
I mean is there any daylight I'm supposed to believe between American power and Turkish power on this?
Well, I think there is daylight in certainly some of the details of the way the Turks are handling this.
And, you know, I'm not going to suggest that the United States was involved in the decision to shoot down the Russian plane.
I doubt that very much.
I don't think the United States would have wanted that to happen.
In other words, a premeditated shootdown is not something the United States would have wanted.
Now, of course, we know that the Obama administration has stepped up and said, yes, of course, Turkey has the right to defend their airspace and essentially defended the Turkish view, Turkish version of what happened in the shootdown, even though I have reason to believe that the Pentagon knows better.
I think that they've looked at the data and that they undoubtedly understand precisely what I just talked about just a few minutes ago.
So the question is, it's not so much whether the Obama administration has the potential or theoretical leverage to force this issue with the Turks.
I'm not sure about the answer to that.
It's in a sense a hypothetical question.
What I do know is that the Obama administration does not have any incentive to call the Turks on the whole policy of deep involvement in supporting the jihadist forces in Latakia province and in the province.
I'm so ignorant and naive, Gareth.
I keep thinking that, well, you know, after the fall of Mosul and the declaration of the caliphate, I mean, they're going to at least have to start slowly turning this thing around.
Right.
And then a year and a half goes by.
A couple of attacks in Paris is, you know, one big one, especially.
Well, now they're going to have to, you know, and even Hillary Clinton says that the Council on Foreign Relations and Obama's former CIA chief, as you noted in a previous article, yeah, maybe we're going to have to prioritize and not get rid of Assad so soon.
But they really don't seem to be turning this thing around at all.
As you quote in your article to end here, hilariously, the president of the United States says, well, that's the Russians fault, more or less, for when they should focus solely on Daesh.
That is amazing.
The idea is the erections were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And it's their fault.
You're absolutely right.
And they put themselves there because what are they doing bombing al-Qaeda?
Yes.
That's what he's saying.
Well, I mean, in fact, as I think we've talked about before on your show, the U.S. policy clearly does view al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, as a part of the overall set of tools with which to put pressure on the Assad regime in order to achieve the explicit goal that the U.S. government now is stating they're pursuing in Syria, which is to bring about a transitional government in which there's already prior agreement that Assad will step down at a certain point in the transition.
So, you know, they're not calling for the immediate dismissal of Assad.
And they are claiming at least to be in favor of holding on to preserving the basic state structure of a secular state structure, such as the one we see now in Syria, as well as the Syrian military.
And I do tend to think that they are serious about that because the consequences of having that be destroyed are so immensely horrible that I cannot imagine that any semi-rational government would say, yeah, yeah, let's try to see if we can't do that.
So I think that it's a fair sort of summary of the actual policy that the United States is trying to achieve that goal.
And I think what they're not saying, of course, but which is true, is that al-Nusra Front figures very strongly in that, even though the U.S. is not going to allow them to come to the negotiating table.
It's going to say, no, no, they're terrorists.
We can't have any truck with them.
But Arar al-Sham, which is their ally, their biggest ally, and fights alongside the al-Qaeda people, is definitely going to be invited to participate, as well as other fighting brigades that are part of that al-Nusra Front-led coalition.
Well, David Cameron, of course, they're having this big fight in the UK right now over the war in the parliament.
And he says that there are 70,000 moderates that can be relied on to take on all comers here.
That is one of history's great frauds, I must say.
I mean, no one, absolutely no one, even those people who support the so-called moderates, really believe that for a moment.
I mean, that was the theoretical estimate at the very height of the moderates back in 2011, or early 2012.
And ever since then, of course, they've basically disappeared.
And everybody knows that.
And so, Cameron is just blowing smoke.
It's that simple.
Well, it's a hell of a story.
Thanks for writing about it.
Thank you, Scott, as always.
All right, y'all, that's the great Gareth Porter.
He's at MiddleEastEye.net, the real reason for Turkey's shoot-down of the Russian jet.
See y'all tomorrow.
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